65 pages • 2 hours read
Liz NugentStrange Sally Diamond
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Toby the Teddy Bear
Toby the teddy bear is a symbol that gains increasing significance as the novel progresses. While it is in Denise’s possession, the bear symbolizes the only evidence of her life before her captivity: a life that was happy and safe. While she languishes under Conor’s control, Toby represents those memories and is the only piece of the outside world that Denise is allowed to pass on to her daughter, Sally. Decades later, Sally receives Toby through the mail, and seeing the toy unleashes a flood of repressed memories. Thus, in this moment, Toby becomes a symbol of the hidden horrors in the family’s past, as well as a source of foreboding and a potential threat, given Sally’s new fears that Conor may be trying to harm her once again. In the Epilogue, Toby again symbolizes a threat when Amanda receives the bear in the mail, for this detail implies that her biological father, Peter, is now stalking her from afar and may have darker designs upon her future. Thus, no matter which time frame the toy appears in, it always carries the weight of memory and trauma, and its reappearance down through the years emphasizes the nature of inherited trauma to continue in younger generations well after the events that first initiated it.
Piano
In Strange Sally Diamond, the piano’s meaning also shifts as the novel progresses. In a positive light, Sally’s skill at playing the piano symbolizes her true passion and a means by which she can reconnect with the world around her, for she eventually gets the chance to regularly showcase her skills in a public setting. Thus, her passion earns her a place in the world and a part-time job that she enjoys, thereby becoming a sign of her forward progress. This talent gives her self-confidence and is also a therapeutic tactic for dealing with stress and finding a constructive role in society. However, the piano also takes on a more sinister symbolic meaning when Sally discovers that her biological father Conor was also a gifted pianist. In this light, Sally comes to see her talent not as a positive gift but as evidence of a deeper taint that she has inherited from an evil man. It is also significant that Conor’s biological granddaughter, Amanda, inherits this passion and talent, for her chosen profession as a pianist becomes a symbol for all things in the novel that are inherited, including trauma, abuse, and the promise of further violence to come.
Thomas’s Records
Thomas’s medical records on Denise are important symbols that represent Sally’s only access to the mother her psyche has forced her to forget. To find a connection between herself and her biological mother, Sally tries desperately to find hints of her own identity within Thomas’s medical records and journal notes of her early time in the psychiatric hospital with Denise. Significantly, as she reads about Denise’s violent and self-destructive habits, she begins to see herself in these mannerisms. While it is true that Sally does sometimes behave as Denise did whenever she is enraged or faces deep-seated stress, it is also true that Sally takes on the narrative of Denise’s past behavior so that she can feel more attached to her long-dead mother. In addition to influencing Sally’s attempts to process the events of her past, Thomas’s records serve a similar purpose for Mark, for he also relies upon Thomas’s notes to find some form of closure over the topic of Denise’s abduction, disappearance, and eventual suicide. Additionally, Thomas himself lives on through his records, gaining a constant presence in the novel despite the fact that he dies before the story really begins. His imperfections, his errors, his flaws, and his care for Sally are all outlined in these records, helping Sally to get to know her father posthumously.
